"Help! (I Need Somebody) Help!...)" - Nintendo Switch

It's my last week in my current job as an economist for a consultancy firm. I have the summer off before going back to university for a year to qualify as a fully-fledged teacher!

As a bit of a present to myself, I'm finally taking the dive and buying a Nintendo Switch. My question is... what do I play first?

The two obvious candidates are 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild' and 'Super Mario Odyssey' - franchises I really enjoy and games that have been highly, highly praised. However, I'm also really intrigued by other games like 'Xenoblade Chronicles 2', 'Splatoon 2', 'Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle' and 'Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze' (when it's out on the 4th).

Given that the Switch has been out for over a year now, what would you recommend as the best thing for me to jump into? I'm open to any and all suggestions.

Thank you! L&R :):):)

(For some more context: I own a PS4, 3DS and a Wii. Pokémon is my favourite franchise. Persona 5 was my GOTY for 2017 out of what I played)

The best game I've played on the Switch thus far is without a doubt Shovel Knight, followed by Mario + Rabbids and Oxenfree, I honestly found Odyssey to be a huge letdown but that is a pretty uncommon opinion.

I'm currently playing through Xenoblade 2 and 40 hours in, it is easily the worst game I've played on the Switch and one of the worst jrpgs I've ever played, I think the combat is dull, the story is uninteresting and most things are poorly implemented. Now you'll find many that think differently and find the game is amazing, from what I've seen people usually fall in those in to places with little in between, so if you haven't I would say it look into its gameplay and its critiques to get an idea where it may fall for you. For reference P5 was also my goty last year, and I love jrpgs.

Do you like the Mario games more than Zelda? Play Odyssey first. Do you like the Zelda games more than Mario? Play Breat of the wild first.
If you love both! Play Breath of the wild first, its a great Game about exploring, solving puzzles and experiment with the world. In my opinion it was a high risk from Nintendo to change such an Big Popular IP but in the end it has work all out.

And if you love platformers please buy Donkey Kong TF it such a good game!

Everything you listed is good, so instead of saying which I think deserves your attention most first, I'll just list what I think you can beat the quickest to what will take you the longest.

Start with Super Mario Odyssey, then move onto Splatoon 2 campaign, then do Mario+Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. Those are the shorter length games on your list, although if you get hooked on Splatoon 2 multiplayer and Salmon Run, it is something you sink way more time into when you need a break from other stuff. From there move onto the must play Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze, which should take you a good while unless you're just a pro or don't care for finding secrets. After that what's left is Breath of the Wild and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Both are very long games if you aim to see most of them, and you could do them in any order you'd like. I've personally got over 200 hours in each now, although that is including the paid DLC for BotW and the free NG+ for Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Both of these are games you should really take your time with and savor. Rushing will only worsen the experiences for you, which is a secondary reason to save them for last.

Another thing to keep in mind is that a second campaign that is paid DLC comes out for Splatoon 2 this summer, so maybe try to knock the campaign that comes with the disc out with enough buffer time that you don't get burnt out right before the new campaign hits. Mario+Rabbids: Kingdom Battle and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are also still getting decent length paid DLC in the future if you finish those games and find yourself wanting more. Also with the already feature complete Breath of the Wild DLC I mentioned earlier. It isn't all that special, basically just if you finish the game and find yourself wanting more. There's pretty much one amazing thing in the whole Expansion Pass.

If you can only focus on one game, pick Breath of the Wild. If you have the time for both, I would only say to play Odyssey first because you will, most likely, put way less time into it. I think I logged 35 hours in Mario and 165+ in Breath of the Wild. I have gone back and played more BotW after beating it but not so with Mario. If you're a completionist though then you might feel compelled to put another 15 hours into Mario to get everything.

There have already been a lot of great suggestions for what to play, so I will just say to check out the Octopath Traveler demo! Also, Aegis Defenders is a fun little game if you're into the Adventure genre. It is a 2D platformer with mostly environmental puzzle solving and a tower defense segment at the end of each level. It has a few dialogue options that are there to encourage you to figure out the characters, and reward you for doing well, but don't really effect the story. The artist took some inspiration from Studio Ghibli for character design/style and there is definitely an "anime" feel to the plot.

The best game on the Switch is Splatoon 2, though that's mainly for the multiplayer. If you want something for singleplayer I'd recommend Super Mario Odyssey. And of course Sonic Mania, though considering the Plus update should be coming in a few months maybe wait for that. Going off a leak I saw it's adding a lot of much needed QOL adjustments in the free patch that'll release alongside the character/encore mode DLC.

@sunpraiser totally forgot those came out on Switch. Yeah definitely give those a whirl if you never had a chance to play them on Wii U.

@bigdude1 I don't know exactly what you mean by solid, for me in the 20 hours of XC and 40 hours XC2 I haven't had fun with it at any point, and if anything it is a constant source of frustration and boredom.

Also at least in XC1 I was able to keep up with it, but XC2 just brings so many poorly explained systems in to play that I honestly stopped bothering with most of them, and it hasn't honestly mattered I'm plowing through the game with a minimal effort in configuring my party, and I can admit that that can be up to me not wanting to delve further into things, but menus are such a mess and things are not clear enough for me to want to bother with it.

Anyhow I don't want to ramble on about how bad I think this games are in here , but in summary no, I do no like the battle system one bit.

@bigdude1 I don't know exactly what you mean by solid, for me in the 20 hours of XC and 40 hours XC2 I haven't had fun with it at any point, and if anything it is a constant source of frustration and boredom.

Also at least in XC1 I was able to keep up with it, but XC2 just brings so many poorly explained systems in to play that I honestly stopped bothering with most of them, and it hasn't honestly mattered I'm plowing through the game with a minimal effort in configuring my party, and I can admit that that can be up to me not wanting to delve further into things, but menus are such a mess and things are not clear enough for me to want to bother with it.

Anyhow I don't want to ramble on about how bad I think this games are in here , but in summary no, I do no like the battle system one bit.

I just can't believe you played it that long and still couldnt get the drive to figuring it out. especially being the main point of these games is mastering it. Compared to persona its way more mentally stimulating and has way better clear cut rules in the combat.

XC2 just brings so many poorly explained systems in to play that I honestly stopped bothering with most of them, and it hasn't honestly mattered I'm plowing through the game with a minimal effort in configuring my party, and I can admit that that can be up to me not wanting to delve further into things, but menus are such a mess and things are not clear enough for me to want to bother with it.

Sounds like you're having a Damiani situation where your lack of understanding of the battle system is ruining the fun for you and making everything way more tedious and dull than it needs to be, but I can't blame you when the game explains the systems once, and it is pretty easy to miss tidbits of it. At launch I had to ask a friend how to sheath my weapon, because I missed whenever the game told me, and there were no online guides yet. Surprised in all the updates they've done that they haven't added a Tutorials section in the menus.

If you check out the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 thread on the forums, a couple of us have tried to go as into detail as possible to explain some of the systems you might be struggling with. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is probably my second favorite Switch game after Breath of the Wild, so it is a bummer to see when people struggle with it and get frustrated. Feel free to ask any question you might have or voice a complaint if you think you're missing something maybe on the thread dedicated to it, and I'll try to respond as soon as I can to help you out.

@mbun I appreciate it, though I don't think it is that to be honest, yeah I haven't really delved into the combat, in part because I haven't had a need to, and in part because I don't care, I don't play games to become an expert in them or anything and the game is simply not engaging for me to want to look more into it. And in any case that is but one of the many issues I have with the game.

in part because I haven't had a need to
the game is simply not engaging for me

While you might not wipe and need to absolutely learn these things to make any progress in the game, you would be surprised how much learning these things will speed up every encounter you do and engage you more in what you are doing as you're no longer just pressing buttons and are in more control of the flow of combat, thus understand what all the things happening mean and how to use them to your advantage to accomplish various tasks. Most games aren't fun when you're bumbling around in the dark not knowing what you're doing really. Even Damiani when he streamed Xenoblade Chronicles 2 spent an insane amount of the game autoattacking slowly and occasionally throwing out a level 4 special, while complaining about how slow everything was, which was a direct result of him not understanding the combat system and "doing it wrong" so to speak.

that is but one of the many issues I have with the game

I certainly have my own issues with the game, (There still isn't a great sorting option for Accessories.) but even with some of those I've figured out little optimizations through playing that have helped immensely in reducing tedium while playing, so if you did post about something bothering you in the thread, there's a chance I could pass that knowledge onto you. If you're just done and don't intend to go back to the game, that's your decision, but if you do intend to finish it I would rather help you out with anything you struggle to understand than lay back while you continue to bruteforce the rest of the game and have a terrible time by result of it.

@mbun I may have exagerated the extend to which I'm saying I'm just bruteforcing and how much I understand of the combat, I'm certainly not just autoattacking and I have a decent grasp of things I believe, there's just a lot I haven't bother with, such as testing different blades, updating the core augments (can't remember the name), or optimizing food items among other things, I know all of these are important and have an effect on combat but I don't want to deal with those, so it is a lot of the things that are adjacent to the combat, in the combat I may not be an absolute expert but I certainly understand what I'm doing, I think I didn't express that well before.

I'm not done with the game, but I'm sticking with it simply because I made a promise/bet with a friend related to it, but as I said at first I think the game is overall terrible, and I don't think that even if I somehow loved the combat my impressions of it would improve.

Think I'm going to bite the bullet and go for Breath of the Wild. Ready to get stuck into something substantial, so the 100+ hours is actually quite enticing right now! :L I also only got round to playing and finishing the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt at the end of last year, so thinking it could be really cool to play 'BotW' with Geralt and co. fairly fresh in my mind and to be able to compare these two much-loved games at the forefront of the 'open-world' genre.

So intrigued by the discussion on Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Might be a bit down the road, but think I'll definitely give it a go at some point - want to try and understand how it all works. I haven't even played XC1 myself but loved Ben's playthrough, which really turned me onto the franchise!

Octopath Traveller has me so hyped!! Gonna play that game a whole bunch when it's fully out in July!! And feeling the DK: Tropical Freeze love hard - might go for it over Odyssey if I have time pre-Octopath Traveller(?!?!)

Thank you again for all of your wisdom. I just wish I had more money and more time to explore more of these ace games/franchises! Feel free to keep using this thread to talk about all the great stuff already out on the "Swiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch (Ian/Kyle's voice)" or to hype up new games which are on the way. L&R :)